The paper studies the equilibrium size of countries. Individuals in small countries have greater influence over the nature of political decision making while individuals in large countries have the advantage of more public goods and lower tax rates. The model implies that (i) there exists...

Using cross–country and Peruvian data, I show that victims of misfortune, particularly crime victims, are much more likely than non–victims to bribe public officials. Misfortune increases victims’ demand for public services, raising bribery indirectly, and also increases victims’...

What explains the varying responses by Thai governments to changes in the international economic environment over time. To answer this the paper emphasizes the link between the nature of the political structure/policymaking environment and the government’s reform capacity. Thailand’s...

This paper surveys alternative approaches to the emergence and evolution of institutions. The challenge is to develop frameworks capable of capturing both stability and change. We follow a “descaling” approach to show how founding assumptions about economics—namely, alternative assumptions...

The paper addresses the issue of rethinking the welfare state as a part of a broader national system of social protection (NSSP) and a mode of societal regulation. In order to overcome the theoretical limits of bottom-up comparative analysis of welfare states, one builds a structural model of...

Chile put into place broad free trade agreements (FTAs) with its two major trading partners: the EU (effective 2003) and the US (effective 2004). This paper quanti- fies their economic effects for the Chilean economy, stemming from the conventional trade components (lower tariffs and higher...

Is there any interrelationship between firm level FDI in the form of cross border Mergers & Acquisitions and capital markets growth and quality? We addressed this question using panel data of cross border M&A for nine emerging economies. Our study period goes from 1987 to 2006. We find that the...

This paper provides an empirical evaluation of the impact of infrastructure development on economic growth and income distribution using a large panel data set encompassing over 100 countries and spanning the years 1960-2000. The empirical strategy involves the estimation of simple equations for...

Despite rapid economic growth and poverty reduction, inequality in Chile has remained high and remarkably constant over the last 20 years, prompting academic and public interest in the subject. Due to data limitations, however, research on inequality in Chile has concentrated on the national and...